


star-gazer, moon-raker

by Eddaic



Category: Gintama
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Character Study, Friendship, Joui War, M/M, Profanity, Sakagin - Freeform, Sakazura, Sexual Content, Unrequited Love, Violence, mature themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-07-29 02:51:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7667443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eddaic/pseuds/Eddaic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He laughs his way through a war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Gintama.
> 
> Warnings for abuse, sexual content, violence, profanity, and mature themes.

**star-gazer, moon-raker**

And after he is done imagining the corpses he could have strewn the floor with, an ache curls round his palm.

Sakamoto remembers, or thinks he does.

***

A week before his eighth birthday he feels hands around his throat for the first time. Sakamoto can't really understand what he did wrong, but it's Father, so he squeezes his eyes shut and doesn't protest. He knows that he does a lot of things wrong, and that children who do wrong must be punished. Still, he is grateful when his mother intervenes, prying him away from Father and shrieking at him to never do that again.

Sakamoto is fine, really. It doesn't hurt all that much now, and he can breathe again. He'd think nothing of it, but despises the tears in his mother's eyes. He wants to joke, to paint a smile on her chalk-pale face, but what comes out of his treacherous mouth is, "What did I do to make him angry? I said I'd be helping you with the garden today so I couldn't go with him to work. Was that wrong? Mother?"

***

He finds that his laughter distracts his little sister. He cradles her in his lap, careful not to touch her broken arm, and points at the stars. By now he is old enough to resent his father's blows, to judge him, in silence, for his voice, which is so often infused with anger or disappointment or both. He keeps his tone upbeat. "So that's how the archer got an arrow in his butt. Ahaha. Hahahaha."

"Liar," pouts his sister, whose tears are drying on her cheeks. "There's no story like that. Mama would have told us."

"She just wants to be polite," says Sakamoto, and gently mops her face with his handkerchief. She sniffs with indignation, but nestles against him, her dark curls soft against his neck. Soon her breathing grows deep and steady.

Sakamoto kisses the top of her head before glancing back up through the window. A sickle moon hangs amid a net of stars. He purses his lips and imagines the sky falling over him, and draws a breath at the sensation it gives him. For a moment he feels invincible, as if he could race, fearlessly, into the abyss of his own future.

Then he blinks and the moment passes. He looks down at his sister, snoring softly in his arms, and draws her closer.

***

Soon enough, he begins to laugh at everything. He considers it something of a secret weapon, as childish as that sounds. With it, both hardships and tiny annoyances are easier to brush off. He laughs at failed exams, at friends who do not exist, at the light in his own eyes. Somewhere along the line, he begins to like it. It is _exhilarating_ , to be able to laugh in the face of anything, anything at all.

When his father calls him into his study to say he will be joining the war whether he wants to or not, Sakamoto guffaws. He is all of sixteen, too tall with gangly limbs, and he's never kissed a girl. "You wanna get rid of me so soon? I'd have thought you'd wait till I'd finished my studies at least."

"I will give you a helmet. Do not lose it."

***

He's sorry, he really is, when he pukes over the two captains standing on the shore. But the sea was never his friend and he thinks people who make good first impressions are jerks, anyway.

***

Sakamoto's eyes linger on Gintoki the next day and it's like he's looking at the morning sun, climbing above Japan. Despite his height he has always felt small, but now he feels utterly insignificant, utterly weak, utterly helpless. Gintoki is a natural force, seeming to exist without a creator, like a boulder or a waterfall; it is as if he sprung from the earth itself.

He calls him 'Kintoki' because, no matter the circumstances, it gets his attention; and there is no way Gintoki would otherwise glance twice at such a glaring anomaly as Sakamoto. And Sakamoto appreciates the twitching eyes and throbbing veins better than indifference.

***

Sakamoto knows that money cannot buy friendship; it tends, in fact, to drive the nicer people (the people worth being friends with) away. He would hide his inherited wealth, but everyone knows who he is, so he laughs when they smile at him (condescendingly, like he'd never known pain, never wept into his pillow till he choked on his own snot) and say, "So what's a rich brat like you doing in a war?"

He likes snappish Takasugi (who really is just a cute bundle of umbrage), but Takasugi sniffs at friendship. He likes sweet, bumbling Zura, but Zura is a mother hen to everyone and, when he is not fighting or strategising, is usually taking a leisurely stroll in cloud cuckoo land.

He...likes Gintoki, he thinks. Or perhaps he is more fascinated by him, by that silver hair and those eyes, those _eyes_ that change colour with his mood: sometimes wine, at others old rust, now and again clotting blood, always seeming fixed on some faraway elsewhere. Sakamoto wonders if there is happiness there, if Gintoki is reaching, stretching for it or searching for a way to get away from it.

Sakamoto is not a man given to envy, but he feels it coil hot in his belly whenever Takasugi bumps Gintoki's shoulder to goad him into a fight, or when Zura fusses and eases bits of alien flesh off Gintoki's face after a battle. They are childhood friends, have created their own little bubble of home, and Sakamoto is not permitted inside.

That doesn't stop him from prodding at it, seeing if he can pierce it. He has always been nosy, invasive; it is a trait (a _flaw_ , another glaring _failure_ ) he has stopped trying to fight.

He plasters on a bright smile, strides up to the three of them as they eat their evening meal around a spitting fire, and says, "Ahahaha, you guys aren't gonna leave me out, are you?"

"Fuck off, Sakamoto; no one wants you here," says Takasugi around a mouthful of chicken dumpling.

" _Takasugi_ ," says Zura, aghast, "don't be rude!" But he doesn't invite Sakamoto to sit down, either.

"Ahahaha," says Sakamoto, unperturbed, "come on, Bakasugi, you can't eat all those dumplings by yourself."

Takasugi's eyes grow wide, and his mouth slowly opens till it forms a very distinct 'n' shape. Zura claps a hand over his lips and stifles a chortle, his shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter. Sakamoto winks at him, fully aware of the power of his own charm. Zura snorts with chuckles, and Takasugi turns to punch him in the shoulder and call him an asshole.

Surprisingly, it is Gintoki who shifts to makes room. "Ha!" he crows. In the firelight he looks feral, shadows licking across the dips and creases of his face, painting a line along his sharp jaw. "That's a good one! I wish I'd thought of it myself. Just for that, I'm letting you sit here."

Even as Sakamoto plumps down, laughing all the while, he can tell that Gintoki is doing this less to accommodate him than to annoy Takasugi. He swipes a dumpling from Takasugi's bowl and smiles, and cackles, and pretends he is welcome in this fractured family, a make-believe replacement for his own, left to rot in Tosa. So far he has received no letter from them, though he has written more than enough.

(He remembers his little sister, curled in his lap, and laughs and laughs to stop the sobs from rising in his throat.)

***

He was carted off to a war he never believed in; if he wants to kiss a god on the lips, rake his fingers through spectral locks and drink in the scent of wild devastation, he will not suppress that desire.

Gintoki is icy and keeps his distance; even for Zura and Takasugi, he shows little affection. He likes wandering off on his own, traipsing in the woods or napping on rooftops. There is something about his conspicuous _aloneness_ that intrigues Sakamoto. Even when Gintoki seems lonely (and he does, because Sakamoto is always lonely, is _terrified_ that it is a curse he cannot shake off – takes one to know one), he does not bother to seek people out. He is more creature than man. Sakamoto sees it in his movements, in the way he crouches down to pick up game, in his lackadaisical coarseness, his filthy language, his chaotic, destructive fighting style (if it can even be called a style).

On a whim Sakamoto trails after him to a purling stream, some distance away from the rest of the army. He watches as Gintoki loosens the top of his kimono, lets it slither off his strong shoulders and flap by his hips; his eyes sweep over him as he kneels and scrubs dried blood and filth from his face, his neck, his torso. Gintoki's pewter curls stick damply to his nape, and Sakamoto wants to play with them, to know if they are silky-soft or coarse like wire wool. His skin is not the delicate lily-white of little lords sheltered from the sun, but an almost burnished bronze; Sakamoto's mouth goes dry as he watches the dappled shadows of leaves dance across it.

"I can wash your back for you," Sakamoto says before he can think the better of it. He is likely going to die within the year; he may as well take advantage of any opportunities that come his way.

Gintoki says without turning around, continuing to clean himself, "I don't want your dirty paws on me or your breath all down my neck."

The words sting like nettles, everywhere, all over. Sakamoto laughs. "Aw, don't be mean, Kintoki! I'm trying to be nice here."

" _Gin_ toki," the other grinds out, turning to glare at him with narrowed eyes and a furrowed brow, and it is like being drowned in fire and storms and pounding, dark waves. A thrill runs down Sakamoto's spine. "Keep away from me," says Gintoki.

"Hahaha. You're horrible, Kintoki! Your back is filthy. There's blood and dirt all over it. Ahahaha, do you ever wash it? It will get infected one day, and you'll die." There are also jagged scars, pink and brown, tearing across the topography of his muscles, and crooked stitches, terrible and beautiful. Sakamoto says in a voice huskier than he'd wanted it to be, "You should make sure your wounds don't get infected, ahahaha."

In the blink of an eye Gintoki is inches away from him, heckles raised and teeth bared in a hiss. Sakamoto finds it distracting in ways it perhaps shouldn't be, and he realises, in the back of his mind, that he had been wrong. Gintoki is not a god, but a demon, thinly tamed by hot food and soothing voices; somehow, the line between the two is slimmer than Sakamoto had thought at first. He swallows to ease his parched throat.

"Don't think I'll get along with you just because you're some rich brat who never had to work a day in his life," Gintoki growls. Sakamoto feels his smile grow tense as a drawn bowstring, but he allows Gintoki to finish.

"What could a guy like you understand about me? Sakamoto, I'll be straight with you. My earliest memory is foraging for food on an abandoned battlefield. Yours is probably playing with your mommy on a soft carpet, with a nanny looking on." His lip curls into a sneer and he lightly presses his fingers over his own heart. "Here's one thing you can't buy."

Sakamoto laughs, out of habit. It is a dry, mirthless thing, like the crack of an old bone. "I wasn't trying to," he says. He is still smiling, but there is no (put upon) light-heartedness in his voice anymore. And damn, _damn_ him for being so honest about what he wants. He despises this flaw, as much a part of him as the atoms that make up his flesh. It got him in trouble with his father (maybe if Sakamoto had been less straightforward, less loud, less candid, less lazy...), and it will probably get him killed in this war. "Ahaha. It gets lonely here sometimes."

Gintoki purses his lips, all anger in his face gone like a passing shadow. In its place is mild perplexity. He steps away from Sakamoto, deliberate and slow, as if wary of frightening him. "I don't think you belong in this war, Tatsuma," he murmurs. The intimacy of the assertion and the use of his name shocks Sakamoto into silence; they haven't known each other that long. Even if Sakamoto is overly familiar with everything that moves, he is painfully, _painfully_ aware that others are not.

" _Ahahaha_ ," he says, louder than usual, throwing his head back and making a great show of seeming amused, "maybe, maybe! Maybe you don't know me, Shiroyasha-san!"


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

The smoke-clogged sky is a mourning shroud and the field is full of lives ripe for taking. Sakamoto sinks his blade into the guts of some Amanto (who surely has a mother with wrinkled hands and a brat with shit and straw in his clothes and a stack of cheap books he wants to read) and bizarrely thinks of a song his sister would hum _there the other children sing drink the night anddawnandnoontime..._

Logy from the screaming horses and roaring men and slick earth, he wonders, vaguely, if children would sing of black blood and gleaming swords if they stood where he is standing now (Sakamoto is sixteen, a _man_ a soldier a sacrifice).

Then he wonders if he will be able to sing again. A shame if he would not – he had always liked singing.

***

There are three other generals and their masks of grimness are hard earned, but Sakamoto has no such trapping. He figures he's not really worth it.

Somehow, he is counted among them.

He tries carefully not to think about whether it is because of his wealth (which provides them a glut of keen steel but periodically fails to fill their stomachs).

***

"It hurts," he gasps. "Oh God, I swear the splinter was huge! The whole thing's lodged in my foot; I know!"

"Be quiet, whiner," says Takasugi, crossing his arms.

"You're cruel, Bakasugi!" Sakamoto groans. "How can you call yourself my friend? Where did you pick up such cruelty? Ahaha, ow, shit."

Takasugi grinds out, "I never called myself your friend. Honestly, do you suffer from amnesia as well as stupidity?"

"Leave him alone, Takasugi," puts in Gintoki, kneeling down beside Sakamoto and taking his foot in his hand. "Here, lemme see."

Sakamoto's cheeks are flaming and he doesn't know what to say, because Gintoki's fiddling with his toes and there's a thoughtful little furrow in his brow and Sakamoto wants to poke it, so he laughs hard. Then Gintoki twists his foot sharply and he yelps. "The splinter's so tiny I can barely see it," he says, turning flat, unamused eyes on Sakamoto. He drops Sakamoto's foot like a hot potato and stands up, dusting his pants. "I'm outta here."

"Wait, no, Kintoki!" Sakamoto says, reaching out an arm, as if that will stop Gintoki. "It really hurts! Come back here!"

"It's _Gintoki_!" the other man calls, but doesn't look back as he strides away.

In the end Zura patiently picks out the splinter with a pair of tweezers. "Honestly, Sakamoto," he says, sounding exasperated. Sakamoto has known him long enough to realise he is entering lecture-mode, and mentally braces himself. "How can you call yourself a samurai when you complain of such trivial things? And why were you walking barefoot in the woods? You know, you could have actually hurt yourself and wouldn't have been able to fight..." Zura drones on and on, and he's boring and finicky and overprotective, but Sakamoto doesn't mind. In honesty, he enjoys having someone fuss over him. (It has been a long time since anyone has done that).

"Ne, Zura," he says.

"It's Katsura. What is it?"

"Thanks a lot."

Zura reddens and stutters, and then gets up, placing the tweezers in the steel bowl, and scrambles out of the tent.

Sakamoto smiles softly to himself. Perhaps somewhere along the way he did manage to worm his way into his comrades' hearts.

***

The last battle had been an almost ridiculous success, with no casualties and no serious injuries. Since such cases are rare, Sakamoto had, with some coin and a glib tongue, procured crates upon crates of sake from some cousins who owned a brewery. The soldiers spend the whole night (and most of the morning) getting drunk off their asses.

From somewhere amid the crowd, Zura's awful voice rings out; he is singing something about a brothel and a widow. Someone hollers at him to stop, and there erupts the bright sound of smashing glass.

Gintoki stumbles next to Sakamoto, hiccups, and sways like a reed in the wind before collapsing next to him on the damp grass. His cheeks are tinged pink, and his jaw is slack. "Ah, yer a fucking bastard, ya know that?" slurs Gintoki, waving his hand around in what seems to be a vague imitation of brandishing a switch to threaten schoolchildren. "Trying to win us over with alcohol - an' it's fucking working, ya piece of shit."

"Ahahaha. The soldiers deserved it." Sakamoto, too, is stupid with drink. He is unpredictable with sake; at times he laughs harder, finds everything funny. At others he grows withdrawn, cannot find the strength to lift his lips in a smile; during those instances he makes himself scarce. Right now he is an odd, nauseating blend of the two.

He starts when Gintoki grabs his arm and examines an old stitch job on his wrist. It is browned and somewhat faded, obviously not from any of his battles. "Where'd ya get this?" he asks, looking up at Sakamoto through long, white eyelashes. Sakamoto knows it is the alcohol talking; normally, Gintoki would never ask such a prying question, and Sakamoto would concoct a lie. But now...now some part of him wishes to spill his guts to a standoffish demon.

"Father gave that one to me," he says, scratching his hair. "Nn, how old was I? Twelve? Mm, I must've been twelve, yeah."

Something in Gintoki's face shifts. The sake-induced gleam in his eyes dims. He gazes at Sakamoto for a long moment before looking back at his wrist. To Sakamoto's surprise, Gintoki delicately runs his sword-callused thumb over the scar, two lines creasing his thoughtful brow. Sakamoto _hates_ him for it.

"Why?" Gintoki asks at length in a clear, deep voice that makes Sakamoto want to sink his fingers into those filth-streaked curls. He wonders, with a twinge of disappointment, if Gintoki will suddenly accommodate him, speak to him like an equal, because of some old sob story. He knows that people flock to tragic tales like sharks to blood, love to talk about them in hushed whispers, as if of some powerful deity whose name should not be taken in vain. Though he's never really considered his life tragic (after all, he had food and a roof and a bed when others were scrounging in the mud), he can see why violence would maybe attract the attention of some softhearted well-wishers.

"Mm, don't really remember," Sakamoto says truthfully, looking up at the stars. "Could have been anything."

Gintoki is silent for a time, and suddenly Sakamoto wishes he'd kept his mouth shut. "What about your mother?"

Sakamoto had not expected Gintoki to look at him with anything akin to pity. Everyone knows that, here at least, your story only counts for shit if you come from poverty, like Gintoki or Zura. Even Takasugi, whose family had battered him senseless, does not receive an ounce of sympathy; he is respected because he possesses the kind of martial brilliance one cannot argue with.

Gintoki's own story is a favourite for fireside tittle-tattle, but Sakamoto doesn't know where myth ends and truth begins. All he knows for sure is that Gintoki had been filching food off corpses and that he was taken in by one Yoshida Shouyou.

"Ahaha!" says Sakamoto, lacing his fingers behind his head and lying down. "An angel! An absolute angel sent from heaven! I tell ya, I did nothing to deserve such a good ma. She an' my sisters, too good for this world." He sighs. "Ah, too good for a good-for-nothing guy like me. They deserved someone..." He racks his sake-addled brains for words. "Brave," he says at last. "And handsome. And smart. I'm not feelin' sorry for myself, ahaha, don't look at me like that. I'm just tellin' the truth."

He hears Gintoki scoff and say, "Idiot. Get off your ass and bring some more sake here. I'm tired of listening to your obnoxious voice."

***

When Takasugi and Gintoki fight, there are primarily two reactions from the soldiers, depending on how long they've known them. It is either terror, blended with a healthy dose of concern for everyone's life, or exasperation and mild amusement. Scuffles between two of the army's greatest warriors (going by reputation, anyway) are exciting, if nothing else.

Predictably, things break. This includes the trunk of a tree. It rumbles low before crashing down, narrowly missing a couple of errand boys, and letting loose a scurry of squirrels and birds. Three brave and burly men, the picture of ideal samurai, attempt to separate the two captains and end up sprawled on the ground, bleeding all over the place and rolling around in pain. Sakamoto hangs back and thinks it's the funniest thing he's ever seen.

This opinion is changed when Zura strides calmly onto the scene, grasps both snarling Takasugi and shrieking Gintoki by the hair, and bashes their heads together with absolutely shocking (and mildly horrifying) force. They crumple to the earth, groaning and cradling their skulls as Zura folds his arms over his chest and, without even glancing at them, proceeds to lecture them on bushido.

 _Now_ it's the funniest thing Sakamoto's ever seen.

***

Sakamoto is lounging on the roof and watching the sky, fissured by the skeletons of tall trees, when someone stumbles noisily beside him and drops down with an 'oof'. He knows it is Gintoki before he sees him; there is a certain languid heaviness and surety to Gintoki's footfall that Sakamoto has by now etched into his memory. He hides his surprise with a laugh and then winces when the laceration on his chest stings.

Gintoki giggles, and Sakamoto raises his eyebrows. He can smell alcohol on Gintoki's breath, pungent and warm, and thinks, _Ah. That's why._ Gintoki scratches his hair, gives a great yawn, and lies back with a contented sound, lacing his hands behind his head.

Sakamoto forces himself to tear his eyes from the firm curve of Gintoki's throat. "What do you want, Kintoki? You're usually not this nice."

"Ah? Is this the thanks I get for bestowing you with my precious company, eh, eh, eh? You bastard, Sakamoto; appreciate my presence." Gintoki rolls onto his side, his breath hot against Sakamoto's neck, and Sakamoto swallows and returns his attention to the stars. Under their light he feels yearless, disembodied; it is a bittersweet sensation, makes him forget the dispassionate demon beside him. He takes a slow breath, holds, releases.

Two fingers turn his head to half-lidded eyes, black in the dimness. "Hey, star-gazer," Gintoki says softly, "what are you looking for?"

The curiosity is unexpected, and Sakamoto's mind slowly grinds to a halt. He tries to speak, to say _something_ , because you can't respond with silence to a question like that. But Gintoki blinks and his eyelashes sweep up and down, and the words shrivel and die before they are formed. Then warm lips are covering his own, a tongue swiping heavily at his lower lip, and a short, rough moan escapes Sakamoto's throat. His eyes slip shut and he opens his mouth, threading his fingers through that hair (wire-wool coarse and oily-filthy and _perfect_ ). "Sakamoto," murmurs Gintoki against his lips, and it is like the entire abyss of the universe is speaking.

A knee nudges firmly between Sakamoto's legs and he gasps, and then there are kisses being peppered down his throat, quick bright teeth nipping at his collarbone. Through the fog of desire he feels vague reluctance. Perhaps it is self-doubt. He breathes, "You feeling sorry for me?"

"Hah?" Gintoki rumbles against his neck, only pausing to speak between kisses. "I don't do that."

"Then..."

"What's wrong with it?" says Gintoki. "You've been tense and jumpy since the battle yesterday. Nothing Gin-san can't fix." He grins, wolf-like, and Sakamoto has to look away. "I'll stop if you want me to."

"You just...do this?" He tries to conceal the bitterness in his voice.

"Sometimes, yeah. Happens around here."

Sakamoto knows, has heard the scuffling at night, the muffled groans and sharp gasps. He has seen pairs of men go wandering off with the excuse of needing fresh air. One of the soldiers had offered to 'go for a romp in the river' with Sakamoto, and Sakamoto had blinked – because why the hell would anyone want to get it on with _him_? – and dumbly asked if the other man was all right.

Stubby, callused fingers rake through Sakamoto's hair and Gintoki says, "What? You don't want this?"

Sakamoto wants to scream. No, he _doesn't_ want this. He wants to be the only one Gintoki kisses. He wants this stupid, futile war to end. He wants them to live in a tiny flat flooded with sunshine and wake up together in the morning and have sex and cuddle and drink shitty coffee and have the same thing for breakfast every day because neither of them passes as a good cook. All he wants is endless love. Is that so much to ask for?

Gintoki's hand slides into the folds of Sakamoto's kimono, and his chilled fingers skim across Sakamoto's skin.

Sakamoto sits up, taking the hand off, and draws a shaky breath. He focuses on the smoke rising in the distance from the enemy camp.

"Sakamoto?"

"Not here."

The needles of grass behind the temple are patchy and prick Sakamoto's back. Gintoki's panting in his ear and got a sticky-damp hand around his shaft; Sakamoto doesn't let himself think too much about whether or not he likes this. It burns and he's only half hard and paying too much attention to the way the collar of his kimono is soaked with sweat and grimy with dirt. Gintoki's name is tucked beneath his tongue and weighs him down like it's made of stone.

Sakamoto hisses and screws his eyes shut at the surge of pain when the other man quickens his pace. Gintoki stops and says, "Oi, are you okay?" and Sakamoto only sucks his teeth in response.

Gintoki slides out of him and Sakamoto rolls onto his side and curls up, trying to hide his face with his hands.

"Tatsuma?" says Gintoki, sounding concerned, and suddenly Sakamoto despises the way his name sounds in Gintoki's mouth, tepid and meaningless. He feels a hand on his shoulder and realises he is shaking. "Shit, did I hurt you?"

Sakamoto laughs, because it's the only thing he knows how to do. His fingers are pried off his face and he is half lifted up and Gintoki's jaw is slack, and that's funny, so he laughs harder. It's only when he registers the odd stuttering of his chest that he realises he is crying. "Fucking hell," he says, shoving Gintoki hard in the chest and folding his hand back over his face, "don't fucking look at me, Sakata. Don't... _don't_..."

Gintoki wraps firm arms around him and pulls him to his chest and tells him, in the softest of tones, "Geez, you're such a baby."

They're both tangled together and half naked under the night sky and Sakamoto has never hated anything more in his life.


	3. Chapter 3

A/n: spoilers for the Rakuyou arc.

Chapter Three  


Sakamoto and Takasugi are among the lot with the unlucky honour of being on lookout duty. Takasugi scowls as he glares into the gloom. He is twitchy and more snappish than usual today; when he heard that thirty-four men were dead and another twenty gravely injured, he had thrown down his wrist-guards and stormed away. They didn't see him for another couple of hours.

"My mother used to say only the good die young," says Sakamoto, in an attempt to comfort him. It rings false even to his own ears.

A mirthless chuckle is Takasugi's response. Sakamoto doesn't have it in him to make fun of him. Not now, not when Takasugi is like this.

"The weak and the unfortunate die young," mutters Takasugi tonelessly, not bothering to look at him. "Though if you're weak, that's unfortunate in itself."

Sakamoto doesn't speak for the rest of the night.

***

He rambles to Gintoki about his plans to go sailing through the universe, carefully keeping his gaze on the sky, so he doesn't have to see Gintoki's expression. He draws a breath to steel himself and then asks, in his cheeriest tone, if Gintoki wishes to join him.

Later, Sakamoto tramps through the trees, chuckling hoarsely to himself. He knew Gintoki was awake, and he had expected the refusal.

It still hurts like a bastard.

***

Gintoki does not look troubled when Sakamoto loses his sword arm, but he and Takasugi ask if Sakamoto remembers his enemy's face. Sakamoto is delirious with pain and blood loss, suffocating from the hot, rancid breath of the soldiers crowding around him; he doesn't know if he gives a name or not. Gintoki disappears and Sakamoto slips into a deep, dreamless sleep.

He wakes, stupid with drugs, in the infirmary – a large tent with injured men packed like sardines, and little else – and finds Gintoki arguing with one of the medics beside the tent flap. They're talking in whispers, but Gintoki's body language speaks for him. Zura is there too, eyes wide with worry, and puts a hand on Gintoki's shoulder. Gintoki shakes it off roughly and snaps something at him, and now Zura looks furious, too, snarling a response in a way utterly unexpected of him.

Gintoki's shoulders sag, and he massages his forehead before muttering a reply and stumbling outside.

***

He doesn't cry when they tell him he won't be able to use a sword again. Zura, face wan and thin, kneels by his side and says that, with the correct physiotherapy, he should be able to regain almost full control of his arm. He's the one who's spent the most time beside Sakamoto in the infirmary, helping with the bandaging and trying to distract him with stories and updates, frowning in that strange, motherly way of his.

A few days later Sakamoto sits cross-legged on his makeshift bed and tries to peel an apple. Searing pain slices down to his bones and spots float in his vision; he pants as he forces his stiff fingers to move. All that churns through his mind is _clumsy, **clumsy** , you swung a blade like you were born with it and now look at you don't pretend this isn't pitiful_. The knife slips out of his hand six times before his eyes sting, and then the tears don't stop.

Zura finds him afterwards curled on the bed, sweating with a fever. He rolls Sakamoto over so he's on his back and his eyes fall on the bloodied bandages. Then he starts to yell in a shrill, aggravated voice, which Sakamoto doesn't appreciate because his skull already feels like it's going to split in two.

"You're not _supposed_ to use your arm right now! The medics told you! Why are you so _stupid_ , Sakamoto? Now it's going to get worse, so don't bitch about that later to us! You were supposed to get okay! You were...supposed..." He trails off into great, gulping sobs, covering his face with his hand. Sakamoto hates watching Zura break down, so he tells him to stop crying, which turns out to be the wrong thing to say, because it only makes Zura cry harder. After a while Zura bends down and tries to gather Sakamoto into his arms. He can't, because he's injured and Sakamoto is heavy, so he sits on his knees and bawls till Takasugi comes running in and punches him on the side of the head.

"What's the matter with you, Zura?" Takasugi hisses. "Sakamoto's supposed to be resting, not listening to your snivelling. Strap your balls back on and get your head out of your ass. You're not the one with the injury."

"Look at his arm!" Zura snaps back through his tears. "He tried to move it and now it's all bloody! He could have hurt himself further!"

Takasugi glances at Sakamoto's arm and grimaces, as if the reddened bandages are an offence. "I'm getting a medic here," he says, hauling Zura into a standing position and starting to shuffle him out of the tent. "If you try anything funny again, I'll break your other arm."

That is Takasugi's way of worrying. Sakamoto blinks and moves his mouth soundlessly. He wants to apologise for troubling them both. He's never seen Zura cry before, and despises the idea that he was the reason for his tears. Then again, maybe the war has just worn Zura down (it's worn all of them down, and the grief and exhaustion has mingled with the marrow of their bones).

***

"Found you!" says Sakamoto happily, leaping forward and flinging his arms round Gintoki's neck. They topple to the earth, Sakamoto laughing and laughing. He never wants to stop laughing, never wants to let this demon go. "I found you," he singsongs into the crook of Gintoki's neck. He feels hands running over his back, tentative at first, then sure and vigorous, warm with life.

"Get off, loud-mouth," grunts Gintoki a moment later, and shoves Sakamoto onto the grass.

Sakamoto's smile shrinks when he takes a look at Gintoki; the man is gaunt, with dark shadows beneath his eyes, and his smile is all wrong, with no trace of insolence. Just what had happened while Sakamoto sweated and shivered his way to half-recovery? He had woken, lucid for the first time in ten days, to a lost war and to comrades hunched in defeat. First he had searched for Zura, then Takasugi; he had found both gone.

He is almost mad with the desire to ask Gintoki where they are; but since Gintoki does not bring up the topic himself, he figures it will be useless to broach it. He forces himself, again, into silence.

Before he leaves, he asks Gintoki, one more time, if he's sure he doesn't want to come along. Sakamoto promises adventure and money and wonderment, and is unable to not hint at love; it worms its way into his voice, lacing through his words, even as he speaks of imploding stars and stormy planets and cold metal spaceships bigger than hills.

Gintoki gives the gentlest smile Sakamoto has ever seen, and shakes his head.

***

He meets Mutsu and forms the Kaientai, and the stars lose none of their loveliness even though Sakamoto spends much of his nights gazing at them. He keeps busy; that's good. It distracts him from invasive thoughts of pale hair and wine-red eyes. Business is challenging in all the best ways and annoying Mutsu is fun (and dangerous, but he's willing to bet he won't lose his life). Periodically he sends rare jewellery and wads of money to his mother and his sisters, and hopes they enjoy the stuff. Mutsu takes to calling him 'boss' and it makes him laugh, because the idea of him being a boss is funny – but he is also flattered, and doesn't tell her to not call him that.

For a while, for ten years that pass like a swift summer wind, he is happy, or at least more than content.

***

At first, he thinks of sending the strange Renho creature to Gintoki. They would make a hysterical pair, and the thing would protect Gintoki if need be. Gintoki needs protection, after all. Beneath his gruff exterior he is self-deprecating, and loving to a fault, and loyal; despite his skill with the sword he has a tendency to receive grave wounds. Sakamoto vaguely knows his whereabouts, but with his contacts, he can easily get Gintoki's address.

 _And it will let him know that I'm alive and well_ , he adds silently to himself. And then: _You utter fool, what makes you think he'll care?_

He decides to deliver it to Zura, who always had such lonely eyes – and Zura does not deserve to be lonely. In any case, if Sakamoto's memory does not fail him, Zura likes anything he can keep as a pet.

***

Gintoki grips him by the hair and drags him through a hijacked spaceship, and Sakamoto has never been more thankful for the sunglasses. "Kintoki!" he cries.

He wants to hug him, run his fingers through that hair again, kiss him on the mouth. He wants to pelt him with questions: Are you all right? What happened after the war? Are you happy? Are you in love? Do you ever think of me, of that time you kissed me? Do you feel guilty for not getting revenge for my arm? Are we still friends?

Instead he claps obnoxiously and calls for sake, like some pot-bellied, middle-aged merchant with a string of servants at his disposal. It's awkward. His voice goes through too many octaves. If he had used Gintoki's real name, he would have revealed too much. He is nauseated with nervousness and anxiety, and pretends he doesn't know how to fly a ship, and rips the steering wheel clean off the board.

After Gintoki rescues him from a tentacled monster straight out of a clichéd sci-fi novel, Sakamoto bursts into laughter, because if he doesn't he'll say _come with me, please, Gintoki_ , _please, please I'll do anything you want give you whatever you want_ and he doesn't need that kind of humiliation.

He sends Gintoki and his new family off with a wave and doesn't look back.

"You okay, boss?" Mutsu asks later on the ship.

"Ahahahaha," replies Sakamoto, ruffling her hair because he knows the gesture annoys her, "why wouldn't I be?"

A part of him – the _better_ , more mature part of him, all high roads and rainbows and blinding sunshine – is relieved that Gintoki has found new people he can lean on, new people he can laugh with. Another is darkly bitter that Gintoki no longer seems to need the men he fought alongside in a goddamn _war_. Unbidden, the memory of Gintoki carrying him on his back off some forsaken battlefield comes to him, and he chews his lower lip.

 _Yeah, right_ , a voice hisses in his head, _you're bitter only because he no longer needs_ you, _but you still need him like you need air, you pathetic fool unable to look forward unable to move on you failure just like your father always said –  
_

"Hahaha," he chuckles hoarsely, "Mutsu, let's get drunk. We'll celebrate meeting an old pal, eh?"

She looks at him oddly, something akin to concern in her normally cool eyes. "Boss..."

"No arguing! Ahahaha! Come on, bring out the sake!" He pushes his sunglasses further up his nose and turns away.

***

It's Zura who tells him.

"You have your revenge."

"Ahahaha. What are you talking about?"

"Your arm."

Sakamoto's brain slowly grinds to a halt. The information is too heavy, too abrupt, and he's not sure he heard right. "What?"

"I mean," says Zura with exaggerated patience, "Gintoki got the guy who slashed your arm."

Sakamoto picks up his glass of beer and tries to appear indifferent. He gives his best smirk. "Oh? Killed him?"

"No." Zura narrows his eyes to slits and glances at Sakamoto with something like bitter smugness. "Ran his bokuto through the bastard's sword arm. He won't be able to use it anymore."

Sakamoto had expected to feel good about that. Instead, he feels nothing, not even the cold numbness that suggests a vaguely negative reaction. The surprise of the news has already worn off. It's been too long, and even if he sometimes yearns for the weight of a sword at his hip, he has grown used to his sleek, lightweight gun.

"Gintoki told me he hadn't felt this satisfied in a long time," Zura continues. "I don't blame him. You should have seen him after you got hurt. He was almost crazy with impatience, trying to find that guy to avenge you. Takasugi, too."

Wordlessly, Sakamoto knocks his glass against Zura's in a toast and they down their drinks.

***

Gintoki joins him to watch the stars from one of the portholes. It is as silent as the bottom of the ocean, and the universe slips by in a tapestry of black and white and blue.

"You like it up here, don't you?" Gintoki murmurs, tucking his hand into the fold of his kimono. "Ah, you were always too big for Earth."                                                            

Sakamoto wants to say too many things to that, so he keeps his mouth shut and puts a lid on his swarming thoughts.

"You're too good for us," Gintoki continues in a soft voice, almost a whisper. He has a dreamy look on his face, as if he is talking to himself.

Sakamoto turns away to stare out of the porthole, but can feel the weight of Gintoki's gaze on him. Then his shades are being slipped off his face, slowly, and he turns to find Gintoki looking at him with pursed lips. He appears oddly young and unsure, holding Sakamoto's sunglasses loosely in his hands. A moment later his arms are around Sakamoto's neck and his lips are mere inches away. Sakamoto can smell their dinner on his breath. For what seems like a long time Gintoki searches his face, and then tentatively leans forward. Sakamoto turns his head aside.

Gintoki draws back, removing his arms. He's still got Sakamoto's sunglasses; Sakamoto wants to snatch them back. "I'm sorry," Gintoki says. "I didn't...I didn't mean..."

"Don't worry; I get it."

Gintoki opens his mouth, but no words come out. He shakes his head, brow furrowed.

Sakamoto suppresses a long sigh. He's _tired_. "Are you in love with me?"

"I don't know."

"Then leave it."

***

The clothes fall well on him, he thinks, looking at the mirror and fixing his hair. Zura says he should permanently do away with the sunglasses because they hide his face. "Idiot," Sakamoto says fondly, "they're _supposed_ to."

"Yeah, but you're not bad looking," replies Zura in that startlingly honest, guileless way of his, and adjusts his own clothes. "Good looking people get better business deals. I read it in a book. I'm not sure how it works, though."

Sakamoto laughs, and it's real. He feels good about this. Negotiation is something he can do well. He looks at Zura and grins till his face hurts, and Zura says in scandalised tones, "What are you smiling for? You realise if we mess up, the Earth will go up in flames?"

"Ahahaha, Zura," replies Sakamoto, throwing an arm around his shoulder, "you worry too much."

"He _should_ be worried," puts in Nobunobu, striding in. "And so should you! How can anyone be so carefree at a time like this?"

"Well, you're not gonna get very far with that stick up your ass," Sakamoto returns, making Nobunobu sputter. He laughs again, bold and bright like the glint of a sword. Zura doesn't join him, but smiles, amber-brown eyes soft and shining. "Really, Sakamoto."

"Anyway," says Nobunobu, "they're expecting us. Make yourselves decent and let's get a move on."

***

Later in their chamber he pins Zura to a metal wall and plants kisses on his pale throat. Zura's breathing is slow and heavy, and he strokes Sakamoto's hair gently, as if wary of scaring him off. There is no desperation in their movements, no sense of wehavetoquickly _now_. Zura fumbles for Sakamoto's hand and they lace their fingers together. It's sweaty and hot, and Sakamoto should find it kind of gross and let go, but he doesn't.

He breaks off only to press his mouth against Zura's, and it's sweet and warm and feels a bit like home, like the comfort of being curled on a bed while rain blurs the edges of the world outside. They share lazy kisses for what seems like an age. Sakamoto's arms wind around Zura's waist and he pulls him close. He noses inky-black locks and breathes deep, runs his hands over that deceptively lithe, astonishingly powerful frame; he is giddy with the solid evidence of Zura's existence.

At length they part and Zura murmurs, his eyes lowered, "This...can't work right now."

Sakamoto hums absently, playing with Zura's fingers. He is oddly calm; maybe somewhere along the line he ran out of fucks to give. To be honest, he's only twenty-eight but he feels bent with the weight of a century. "After all this is over," he says. It sounds like a promise. Perhaps it is.

"If we're both alive," Zura replies solemnly.

Sakamoto flicks his temple. "Hey, now, don't be a gloomy terrorist."

"I am _not_!"

"Are too!"

The ensuing scuffle involves wrestling and they end up on one of the beds, pink in the face with mirth. Under their weight, the springs creak and groan rudely, and that only makes them laugh harder. Sakamoto is straddling Zura's hips and Zura's yanking at his curls, and maybe –

Zura lets go, giggling helplessly, and his head flops back onto the pillow. There are crinkles at the corners of his eyes and laugh lines around his mouth.

Maybe it will be all right.

_-finis-_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: I had planned on some mild Zura/Sakamoto peppered here and there, but not much more. This story was supposed to have different ending, but the Joui boys sort of...did whatever they wanted.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading. Comments are very cool.


End file.
